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Damo Suzuki's Network

An old Japanese man in a blue t-shirt
stands on a dimly lit stage clutching a microphone stand as if his
life depended on it. Diminutive in stature and ascetic in appearance,
the man babbles into the microphone with transcendent intent. Damo
Suzuki's done this a million times before, and over the next fifty
minutes loses himself inside his performance once more. As his
straggly silver hair snakes across his face, his voice rises and
falls, one minute a high-pitched mantra, the next wordless gurgle. In
the gloom behind him, an ad hoc band carve out a slow-burning
backdrop. It begins with bowed guitar, adding percussive flourishes
and bass and keyboard patterns that steadily flesh out to become a
complementary pulsebeat to the incantations they accompany.

Suzuki
first carved out his niche with Can, the German kosmische hippy
classicists he joined after being spotted busking on the streets of
Munich in 1970 by the band's bass player Holger Czukay and drummer
Jaki Liebezeit. This was after their original vocalist Malcolm Mooney
quit after one album, following doctor's advice.

Suzuki's
first recordings with Can appeared on the band's Soundtracks
album, and stayed for three full releases, the holy trinity of
Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi and Future Days, before
he took a decade out from 1973 to give himself to religion. Since
returning to music, for the last two decades Suzuki has embarked on a
never-ending tour that sees him hook up with locally sourced 'sound
carriers' wherever he goes. Despite this, and judging by his
hypnotic, relentlessly intense delivery, even after all these years
it's as if this mercurial poet-ruffian is attempting to break on
through to a higher plane.

Last month marked fifty years since
the formation of Can, whose free-form pre-punk avant-disco-rock
workouts opened the doors of perception for several generations of
musical explorers. With a new box set of singles pending, to
commemorate, keyboardist and founding member Irmin Schmidt took part
in The Can Project, a curated extravaganza at the Barbican in London
that saw him conduct the 78-piece London playing the world premiere
of Can Dialog, a
self-referencing piecewritten
with composer Gregor Schwellenbach. Following a screening of
Can's 1972 performance in Cologne, this, am eight-piece supergroup
led by Thurston Moore and featuring ex Sonic Youth drummer Steve
Shelley and My Bloody Valentine bassist Deb Googe among others,
including a presumably revitalised Mooney, performed a
should-have-been greatest hits set.

While Leibezeit had been
scheduled to appear prior to his death earlier this year, whether
Suzuki was asked to take part isn't on record. Judging by his nomadic
restlessness over the last two decades, such backwards-looking
formalities probably wouldn't have been this sixty-something's style.
What was very much on the agenda for his first Edinburgh show in
fifteen years was an attempt to make something that was both
spontaneous in execution and timeless in delivery. This is always a
tall order for whoever the sound carriers might be, who, whether by
accident or design, and as past showings have demonstrated, just
can't help sounding a little bit like Can.

Tonight, however, a
six-piece band culled from Edinburgh's underground scenes rise above
both imitation and homage. Guitarists Sarah and Simon Cuthbert-Kerr
and drummer John Sinclair play in Wozniak. Saint Judes Infirmary bass
player Grant Campbell is also half of Optic Nerve with Cosima Cobley
Carr, who on keyboards tonight. Playing alongside percussionist E-da,
formerly of Japanese band Boredoms, they add moody little textures to
a controlled set of on the spot arrangements that never give way to
easy wig-outs. With Suzuki at the music's centre, metallic rhythmic
shards of sound drive each other onwards over one continuous piece,
before a euphoric Suzuki points his fingers to the skies, for the
moment at least, sated, before the trip continues anew.

Product, May 2017

ends

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About Me

Coffee-Table Notes is the online archive of Neil Cooper. Neil is an arts writer and critic based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Neil currently writes for The Herald, Product, Scottish Art News, Bella Caledonia & The List. He has contributed chapters to The Suspect Culture Book (Oberon), Dear Green Sounds: Glasgow's Music Through Time and Buildings (Waverley) & Scotland 2021 (Eklesia), & co-edited a special Arts and Human Rights edition of the Journal of Arts & Communities (Intellect). Neil has written for A-N, The Quietus, Map. Line, The Wire, Plan B, The Arts Journal, The Times, The Independent, Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman, Sunday Herald, Scotland on Sunday, Sunday Times (Scotland), Scottish Daily Mail, Edinburgh Evening News, Is This Music? & Time Out Edinburgh Guide. He has written essays for Suspect Culture theatre company, Alt. Gallery, Newcastle, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Berwick upon Tweed Film and Media Arts Festival & Ortonandon. Neil has appeared on radio and TV, has provided programme essays for John Good and Co, & has lectured in arts journalism at Napier University, Edinburgh.